Long commutes, dirty streets, expensive everything – there comes a time when the ‘Should I leave London?’ thoughts start creeping into everyone’s head.

You see Bristol and Oxford climbing up the ‘best city to live in’ lists, then you visit friends in Brighton and marvel at how cool it’d be to live by the beach.

Maybe you’ve even begun concocting wild fantasies about buying some farmland and surrounding yourself with chickens and goats for the rest of your life.

But for those who take the plunge, it can feel bittersweet. You love your new life, but there are many unexpected things to miss and strange realisations to behold. Here’s what you learn when you kiss the capital goodbye.

1) At first you can’t help feeling slightly superior because you’re ‘from London’

Then you realise this isn’t the way to make friends.

2) You’re constantly shrieking at how cheap everything is

The only problem is you’re earning less now, too.

3) You want to tell TFL how sorry you are for every bad word you ever said

The buses here cost £2.80 and only come once an hour.

4) Distances suddenly become a real problem

You didn’t used to bat an eyelid at sitting on the tube for half an hour, but now a similar journey feels like flying to Kuwait.

5) You feel guilty about failing to have made the most of the capital’s cultural offerings

Why did I spend so many Saturday mornings in bed instead of at the British Museum?

6) Now you’re obsessed with visiting the coast and countryside

Your new best pals (Picture: Getty)

Because you really need to ‘make the most of it’ now you’re not in London.

7) You rediscover spontaneity

People don’t need to be booked five weeks in advance anymore.

8) No one cares how much your house cost

Apart from all your London friends, who weep when you tell them.

9) You feel like you still know what’s going on in London

Because all media, everywhere, won’t stop talking about it.

10) But when you go back, you discover unexpected changes

You mean the circle line’s not even a circle anymore?

11) People outside London love talking about why it’s much better living wherever they do

But you realise there are pluses and minuses to both the capital and elsewhere.

12) You become overly nostalgic about really strange things

Such as the Victoria line, the 91 bus and the 24 hour offie at the end of your road.

13) London people talk to you like a small child when they discover you don’t live there

And then you cringe when you realise you used to do this, too.

14) You truly, honestly, do not understand how you ever survived commuting